1. Technical Field
The present disclosure relates generally to web communication and, more particularly, to a method and system for compressing URL request parameters.
2. Description of the Related Art
Web page communication involves communicating information back and forth with a web page. Every web site can be made up of one or more web pages and the content for the web pages can be written in a HyperText Markup Language (HTML), a language that governs how web pages are formatted and displayed. Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP) can define how HTML pages are formatted and transmitted and what actions a web browser and web server can take in response to various HTTP requests. For example, entering a Uniform Resource Locator (URL) into a web browser sends an HTTP request to a web server directing it to obtain and transmit the desired page.
A URL is used to reference resources on the Internet and can consist of a protocol identifier and a resource name. The protocol identifier can indicate the name of the protocol that is being used to obtain a resource, for example, HTTP, FTP, File, News, Gopher, etc. The resource name can include a host name, filename, port number, reference, etc. The host name is the name of the machine where the resource can be located and the filename is the pathname to the file on the machine. The port number is the port that the request can connect to and the reference can identify a specific location within a file.
When a web client using a web browser submits information to a web server, this information can be appended to the URL and sent to the web server. However, many web browsers may have a limit on the number of characters that can be used for an HTTP request. Different browsers may have different restrictions on the URL length. For example, if a web client wants to create a new record and the amount of characters exceed a maximum amount, then the web client or server may no longer respond.
Accordingly, it would be beneficial to provide a reliable and effective way to compress request parameters in order to ensure that a web browser can transmit a maximum amount of data for a request.